Flash support has always (according to some people, painfully) been missing from the iOS platform. In the article below, I explain how you can watch any kind of Flash videos (via SkyFire) and how you can use full(!) Flash (and even Silverlight!) applications on your iPad (via AlwaysOnPC). All this without having to jailbreak!

Pure Flash videos

Summertime is vacation time. And if you use campgrounds when you're vacationing, you'll want to check out Woodall’s RV & Camping Copilot (free). It lists more than 12,000 private and public campgrounds and RV parks in the United States and Canada, plus Mexico. It offers campground information, including amenities, services, types of campsites, on-site recreation, as well as identifying many camping discounts offered at parks. Private campgrounds also include Woodall's 5W/5W Rating System.

In my ongoing series on novel uses of the iPhone and iPad camera, here's yet another: an app that lets you take a picture of a leaf and then gives you information about what type of tree it as. Leafsnap (free) returns the likely species name, as well high-resolution photographs of and information about the tree's leaves, flowers, fruit, seeds, and bark. The app was funded by a $2.5 million grant from the National Science Foundation and was developed by the Smithsonian Institution, University of Maryland, and Columbia University.

I'm always amazed by all the novel uses of the camera on iOS devices — from taking your pulse to helping those who are colorblind determine colors — and wrote an article about that in a recent issue of the magazine. And I just received a press release for another. CaMeasure lets you use your camera to measure size or distance. It does this in one of two ways. For smaller objects such as furniture, the app asks you to put an object of known size, such as a sheet of paper or a credit card, by the object.

Mission Workshop is a company in San Francisco that designs and makes messenger bags and backpacks (and apparel too). All of their products are proudly made in America. They sent me over a Rambler backpack to try out and this thing is a beast (a good beast). I have a Swiss gear backpack that I have used for years.

Big Fish Games is rapidly becoming the Infocom of the object hunting puzzle adventure iOS gaming arena. Their latest interactive story, Haunted Manor HD, places gamers in a typical Victorian-style haunted house scenario, learning clues about the ghosts occupying the house as the various hunt and peck puzzles are solved. How does Haunted Manor compare to other Big Fish titles? Read on to find out.

Haunted Manor HD follows the simple story of Stan Riddle who is inexplicably trapped in an elegant, spooky mansion filled with a cornucopia of objects. Consisting of over 90 tasks spanning 18 different locations throughout the mansion, players eventually re-assemble pieces of a broken mirror to reach the story's resolution.

Global Navigation Systems, (a.k.a. GNS) has created and sells a plug and play Bluetooth GPS receiver for IOS devices. It’s called the GNS 5870 MFI. (MFI stands for Made for iPhone). I’m not a stranger to testing out and using GPS systems but this is the first one I have used for my Apple product, so I am excited to work with it. Even though I have some knowledge of GPS, I am by no means an expert in this area. There are two things I look for though. One, a quick satellite lock, and two, it just needs to work.

There is no jail breaking required. I’m testing this out on my Wi-Fi only iPad. The Nav App I am using is Co-pilot.

You need to calibrate this so that it's accurate, so I haven't taken the time to try it. But they claim that you can actually use your iPhone as a thermometer. You can see a video of the process of calibrating the Thermos app ($1.99), and then see it actually measure the temperature, on YouTube.